Harry Potter and the fight for freedom
by AlexHP
Summary: Lots of HG romance, adventure and lots and lots of Dumbledore bashing. Read and Review. Please!


As Harry sat in the Dursley's car on the way back from King's Cross, his scar pressed against the cold glass of the window with the sun in his eyes, he mulled over all the pain and loss he had experienced in his life. First, there was the catalyst, loosing his parents. Then living with the Dursley's and being abused for 11 years of his life, his heritage and destiny hidden from him. Next, his friends getting hurt, just from associating with him; their adventures with the Philosopher's Stone which resulted in Ron being nearly killed by a giant chess piece, then the Chamber of Secrets where Hermione had been petrified and Ginny nearly killed, her childhood and innocence stolen, just so Tom Riddle, aka Voldemort, would have another chance at killing him. Facing Peter Pettigrew, the man who betrayed his parents, watching Cedric be killed and Voldermort rise again, "Sirius! Sirius!" Harry's eyes clouded over as he witnessed again in his minds eye that terrible night when Sirius had died. All because,in Harry's view, of two people; Voldemort and Dumbledore. Sure Voldermort's hand and mind had been the ones that had caused these deaths but it was also Dumbledore's fault, Dumbledore, who had placed him with the Dursleys to suffer for 11 years, who had hidden the true reason his parents had died from him and in doing this had caused Harry to make ill-informed decisions that had lead to people's deaths. That damned prophesy! Harry hated it with all his heart, just as much as he hated the two men who had made his life a living hell. Neither can live while the other survives!  
" Boy!"Harry heard Uncle Vernon snap. He turned his head despondently from the window to look at the back of his uncle's head.  
" Just because your freaky little friends tried to scare us at the station, don't think that you are going to have an easy summer, oh no! In fact, you will have a new chore to perform. You Aunt had a baby girl while you were away at your school, and its," Uncle Vernon lowered his voice and hissed " One of your kind."  
Harry head, that had been resting in his hands, snapped up. " You mean she's a witch?"  
" Don't say it boy!" barked Uncle Vernon. "All you need to know is that we do not want it anywhere near us. We don't even want to acknowledge that she is ours. We have told the neighbours that you knocked up some poor dumb criminal girl at Saint Brutus's and when it was born she didn't want anything to do with it or you so you are taking care of it."  
" You said WHAT!" Harry shouted, the lethargic-ness that had covered him like a shroud since Sirius' death momentarily lifting.  
" Don't you take that tone of voice with ME boy!" Uncle Vernon bellowed. " That is the story and you will be sticking to it or you will regret the day you were born!"  
" O.K." replied Harry dully, resigned. "What have I got to do?"  
" Your Aunt will explain it when we get back home. You are not under any circumstances, and I mean any boy," He glared at him through the rear view mirror to make sure he got his message across, " To bring that thing anywhere near me or my family."  
"Yes Uncle Vernon." said Harry. Then something occurred to him. " What's her name?"  
" We haven't given her one," replied Uncle Vernon, " We don't believe that one of your kind should be given a respectable name. If you want you can name her yourself, especially as she's your daughter." And with an evil grin from Uncle Vernon, the car became silent until they arrived back at Privet Drive.

As Harry dragged his trunk upstairs to the smallest bedroom he pondered on this new revelation, letting it take over his mind so he didn't have to think about darker things. If the baby was 5 months old now ( this much he had gleaned from Aunt Petunia, as well as the baby's birthday, Halloween) then Aunt Petunia must have been about 2 months pregnant when he had left for Hogwarts. How had he not noticed that she was pregnant with her form as thin as a rake? As Harry opened his bedroom door he blinked and stared into the room. Some things had definitely changed since he had last been here. The room now contained not just all his old furniture but also an old and poorly made crib that Harry thought might have been his own when he was small and a tiny box which Harry assumed contained clothes, and in the crib… Harry slowly moved closer, leaving his trunk by his own bed. As he looked down into the cot he saw a tiny figure looking back at him with bright emerald green eyes and a light covering of auburn fuzz decorating her head. Harry sucked in a sharp breath. This little girl, not even a year old, was a mirror image his mother and yet also reminded him of himself so much that he felt tears sting the back of his eyes. Harry bent down and awkwardly picked up the child and cradled her in his arms as he sat down on his sagging mattress.  
" Hi," he whispered, running a gentle finger down her baby soft cheek,  
"I'm your cousin Harry. And your…" Harry paused, and then said with conviction in his voice "Lily. And since you're meant to be my daughter, you're a Potter. Lily Potter. What do you think Lily? Do you like your name?" Lily gurgled and reached up her tiny hand to Harry and grasped his little finger possessively. Suddenly Harry heard a sniff fro his door and looked up from Lily's bright green eyes that were a reflection of his own into the teary blue eyes of his Aunt.  
"Aunt Petunia?" asked Harry, feeling worried in spite of himself. He had never actually seen his aunt cry before.  
"That's just what I thought when I saw her after she was born," said Aunt Petunia in a hoarse voice. "I thought that Lily had come back to me in the form of my own child."  
Harry stood up, still cradling Lily in the crook of one arm, and walked over to his aunt, shutting the door behind her and guiding her over to sit down on his bed while he took his desk chair, rocking Lily gently.  
"At first I hated her, just because she looked like Lily, but then, when I realised she was a witch too, I began to realise that I didn't hate her and I had never hated Lily."  
" What do you mean?" Harry whispered, confused. His aunt had always ranted about how his mother was a freak and how she had hated her.  
" Before she got her letter, Lily and I were best friends. She was my big sister. We did everything together. Then when she went away I was all alone. I was angry at her. And then when she married your father she hardly ever came to visit me. So, I tried to convince myself that she was a freak and that I hated her. But I knew deep down that I didn't. Then, when you turned up here and I found out that Lily was dead I suspected that it was somehow because of you. So I placed my anger and hatred of Lily onto you. I said it was because you were magical too but it was really because you were, I believed at the time, the reason Lily died and also you had something I could never have. Your magic."  
Harry stared at his aunt. He had never had her talk to him in such a kind way before and not only that, she was talking about magic! Then he realised that his aunt was still talking and he listened.  
" After Lily died I was the one to tell our parents. They were heart broken. That's when they broke down and told me that Lily had never been a muggle born, that she was a pureblood and I was a squib."  
Harry's head was reeling. His aunt was a squib! His mother had been a pureblood! And that made him a pureblood too! He couldn't wait to throw that in Malfoy's face next time he called him a half blood. Through the dim haze that had gathered in his brain from the onslaught of information, Harry stood up and sat down next to his aunt on the bed, put his free arm around her and hugged her. She turned her face into his shoulder and cried. Harry just held her. When she was finished she sat up straight and mopped her eyes.  
" Harry, you must never reveal any of this to your uncle or anyone else. If he knew that I was…¦ what I am, he'd divorce me and leave me with nothing."  
" But Aunt Petunia, there is someone you can talk to about all of this apart from me." replied Harry, shifting Lily in his arms.  
" Who?" asked his aunt.  
" Mrs Figg." responded Harry.  
" What are you talking about!" said his aunt incredulously. " She's a muggle!"  
" No she's not," corrected Harry " She's a squib too. I found out last summer."  
" She's a squib too?" asked Aunt Petunia faintly. Harry nodded. " Then she knew who you were, every time we sent you round to her house, she knew that you were a wizard?"  
" Dumbledore's meddling" ground out Harry, his anger towards the old man surfacing. " He wanted somebody to spy on me and report to him while I was growing up, while letting me carry on thinking that everything odd that happened around me were coincidences."  
Harry saw his aunt looking at him oddly with not a bit of fear in her eyes. Harry supposed that he had let his temper get the better of him. He carried Lily over to her cot and laid her down, watching her eyes drift shut before he spoke again.  
" The old ( Harry used a word that made Aunt Petunia look at him in shock )  
has been controlling my life ever since my parents died. First sending me here, hiding what I was from me, then letting me face Voldermort on my own countless times, almost dying in the process along with my friends, spying on me and letting me make mistakes that got people killed because he didn't want me to know the truth about what I was." Harry spat the last bit out in a venomous hiss, full of hatred towards the Headmaster.  
" Harry?" said his aunts voice timidly and Harry looked up from his hands that he had bunched into fists, into his aunts face, which was a mask of fear. Harry forced himself to relax and sat down in his chair. He looked at her again and gave her a half-hearted grin, but he was sure it didn't reach his eyes. " Sorry," he whispered, " I'm just a bit stressed out right now."  
" It's O.K. I'd probably be a bit angry if someone had been controlling my life."  
" It's not just that," he explained slumping further down into his chair and closing his eyes, "Because of Dumbledore's hiding things from me, "Harry swallowed painfully " I got my Godfather killed. Not even 2 weeks ago." Harry felt a single tear run down his cheek. Then he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw his aunt standing over him, and the look on her face made something inside of him snap. He hurled himself into her arms and sobbed, cried out with pain, letting himself go to his grief for the first time since Sirius had died. In front of his eyes he could see Sirius duelling with Bellatrix, laughing at her, getting hit by the stunner, the confusion in his eyes while the grin lingered on his face, his body falling through the veil… Harry sobbed and sobbed until he thought his insides must be empty of tears before the rampage of grief inside of him ceased and he drew back from his aunt. Somehow they had moved from standing to her sitting on the bed with him half cradled in her lap.  
" Sorry." he whispered croakily, moving from her lap to the bed beside her.  
" It's O.K." She crooned, rubbing circles on his back. " Harry," she continued " I know that this probably isn't the best time to ask you this but I don't think that I'll have another chance to talk to you like this, this summer. If you are able to, I want you to take," she glanced at the cot were the baby lay sleeping peacefully, undisturbed by Harry's crying, "Lily with you when you leave here, and erase all knowledge of her existence from our minds. I don't want her to have to go through what you went through at Vernon's hands. I want her to have a good life and," she looked into Harry's eyes and smiled " I know that you can be a better father to her then Vernon could ever be." And with that she stood up kissed Harry gently on his forehead and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.  
Harry sat there stunned. I know that you could be a better father to her then Vernon could ever be. A father. Cold he bring up a child with the kind of life he led, with Voldermort constantly trying to kill him and those he loved? He got up and went and stood over Lily while she slept. As he looked down on her tiny form, his heart swelled and he knew that he would do anything to protect her. She was his daughter, just as much of one as she would have been if she had come from his own blood. He knew he couldn't leave her here to suffer the childhood he had had. He loved her already and he would not let that happen.  
Harry crept back to his own bed and threw himself down on it, emotionally exhausted and in no time at all he was asleep.

He was standing in a stone room in his pyjamas and right across from him stood a familiar ornate mirror. The Mirror of Erised. Harry drifted across to it and peered into it. There, as normal, were his parents smiling down at him, but now his mother was cradling Lily in her arms and standing beside his father was a girl with red hair who seemed so familiar to Harry, but he could not recognise her, as her face was hidden. Then Harry felt a cold wind around him and the images in the mirror shifted and changed. Now there was an image of Sirius glaring down at him, a frown creasing his features and he said in a cold, unfeeling voice â€œ I'm dead and it's your fault Harry. You're the reason I died. If I hadn't been you Godfather I would never have come to an end like this. The people who know you die. I should have known better than to associate with scum like you. You deserve to die. Voldemort has more right to live than you!" Harry backed away from the mirror saying " No, no, I didn't mean for you to get hurt Sirius, I was trying to help you." But Sirius' arm slid out of the mirror and his cold fingers slid around Harry's throat, choking him, and his scar burst with pain; and Harry screamed and sat bolt upright in bed, just as Uncle Vernon came bursting into his room and Lily started whimpering with fear.  
" Stop your screaming boy!" bellowed Uncle Vernon, hitting Harry across the face so hard that Harry's head slammed into the wall and he saw lights popping in front of his eyes. " If you ever make that much racket again boy you will regret it." And with that Uncle Vernon stormed out of the room past a scared looking Aunt Petunia who was standing by the door. When they heard Uncle Vernon's bedroom door slam Aunt Petunia hurried into the room and sat on the bed beside Harry, who had switched on his bedside lamp and glanced at the clock which read 1:30.  
" Oh Harry!" moaned Aunt Petunia peering at his face. " You better go and put some cold water on your face, you are going to have such a bruise!"  
" I will," replied Harry sliding his legs of the bed and giving his Aunt a brief hug, " Thanks."  
" You're welcome." she whispered, hurrying out of the room as Harry made his way over to Lily's crib and picked her up, rocking her so that she would stop whimpering. Harry finally came to the conclusion that she was hungry and, lifting Lily over his shoulder, he quietly made his way downstairs to try and find her something. At he rummaged through the kitchen cupboards he came upon and old feeding bottle with a duck on it that he assumed had been Dudley's. Quickly he filled it with hot milk that had been warming on the stove and, picking Lily up again, hurried back upstairs to his room.  
As he entered he lay Lily down on the bed and tested the milk on his wrist like in movies he had seen. It seemed fine. He cradled Lily in the crook of his arm and placed the teat of the bottle into her mouth and was relieved when she began to suck greedily. When she was finished Harry put the bottle to one side and placed Lily back in her crib, watching her gently drift off to sleep before settling himself at his desk to do some work, knowing that if he went back to sleep he would experience nightmares again and Uncle Vernon would be sure to keep his promise if he screamed again.


End file.
